9-minute read
keywords: marine biology, wildlife conservation

As some of the world’s largest predators, orcas are both loved and loathed, though these sentiments sometimes come from unexpected corners. Danish marine biologist Hanne Strager has studied orcas and other whales for some four decades, working with a wide range of people. In The Killer Whale Journals, she plumbs the complexities and nuances of people’s attitudes, writing a balanced, fair, and thought-provoking insider’s account. Given the preponderance of research and books on Pacific Northwest orcas, hers is a refreshingly cosmopolitan perspective, taking in the experiences of people past and present in many other parts of the world.

The Killer Whale Journals: Our Love and Fear of Orcas, written by Hanne Strager, published by Johns Hopkins University Press in June 2023 (hardback, 266 pages)

Strager’s involvement with whale research started on a whim when she volunteered as a cook on a small research vessel going around the Lofoten Islands in northern Norway. This was in the 1980s and would, with some interruptions, be the start of a career in research and education that lasts to this day. Though she is fully qualified to write a scholarly work on orca^[1] biology, this is not that book^[2]. Rather, this is “a patchwork of stories I have collected over my years on the ocean about our relationship with the biggest predator on Earth” (p. 17). And what a wide-ranging, multi-hued patchwork it has become!

Some of these relationships are as you would expect. In her early days in Norway, both the whalers and fishermen she spoke to disliked orcas, considering them a pest species that frightens away other whales and eats all the herring. The best she can get out of the whalers, after showing them footage of orcas hunting herring, is admiration, though “it’s the hunters’ admiration for other smart hunters” (p. 61). Similarly expected is the strong respect expressed by First Nations people in British Columbia. She visits Ernest Alfred of the ‘Namgis tribe who lives on a tiny island off Vancouver Island. He quit his job as a park warden in 2018 to spend 284 days occupying a local island in protest against the operations of an open-net fish farm, echoing earlier protests by e.g. whale biologist Alexandra Morton. Large-scale aquaculture of Atlantic salmon off the coast of North America is big business but has well-documented impacts on the local environment and salmon populations that are in turn food for orcas. Alfred’s clever use of social media to broadcast his protest seems to have had an effect, and Canada is now seeking to end open-net fish farming in its waters.

Other people hold attitudes you would not expect, breaking with stereotypes. The Thawa tribe in New South Wales, Australia developed a cross-species cooperation with orcas in Twofold Bay: the orcas drove baleen whales close to the coast making them easier to catch, the hunters in turn left the carcasses in the water for a few days so orcas could take the choice bits. When Scottish whalers emigrated to the area in the mid-1800s, they continued this relationship, leading to an unlikely, century-long alliance between orcas and whalers. At the other end of the spectrum, Strager visits Inuit hunters in Greenland who continue to rely on the sea for their sustenance. They kill orcas on sight, convinced they eat narwhals. However, data from the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources do not back up this assertion: orcas rarely share the waters with narwhals, nor have narwhal remains been found in their stomachs. Hunting organizations disagree and stick to their narrative, continuing to kill orcas even though the meat is unsuitable for human consumption due to high levels of bioaccumulated pollutants. Strager is loathe to judge these people given their hospitality and willingness to talk to her, but she candidly admits that she is left troubled. “It is a widely accepted belief that the Inuit have a special relationship with nature and that this is automatically sustainable. Yet I can’t help but wonder if [this idea] is one of those persistent stereotypes, grounded in traditions and some truths but not totally accurate today” (p. 193). This might be an unpopular thing to say, but it strikes me as a good example of the limits of Indigenous ways of knowing. Yes, science has ignored Indigenous knowledge for too long, but it cannot be exempt from criticism. I rather agree with what Carl Safina recently wrote in Alfie & Me on the difference between the two: “For discerning objective reality […] science has the stronger claim” (p. 36 therein).

“As some of the world’s largest predators, orcas are both loved and loathed, though these sentiments sometimes come from unexpected corners.”

What further contributes to the book’s full-bodied picture is that Strager, as a Danish scientist, provides a non-US-centric perspective and has access to material written in other languages. With the help of a friend, she translates hundreds of newspaper articles from Iceland’s National Archive to puzzle together the story of how the US Air Force got involved in massacring orcas here in the 1950s, doing bombing raids on pods. Fishermen, driven to despair when the orcas discovered a new trick to catch fish from their gill nets, complained to the authorities who asked the Americans for help. Given that the presence of a US Air Force base in Iceland was controversial at the time, it presented a great PR exercise for the military, creating goodwill amongst the locals. Being plugged into the Scandinavian research community, Strager can furthermore draw on her connections to visit and speak to people in Denmark, Greenland, Russia, and various places in Norway.

Increasingly, the demonization of orcas has made way for a different understanding, seeing these as intelligent mammals, not unlike us. A new generation of fishermen in Norway is less hostile. The extra income generated by wildlife tourism and whale watching does not hurt, but, adds a Norwegian marine ecologist, there is also a sense of pride in one’s local patch. Having tourists visit from around the world and witnessing their awe can make people realize that their humdrum backyard is maybe not that humdrum after all. Captive orcas in aquaria and marine parks are another reason why public attitudes shifted from fear to fascination to concern over animal welfare, as has been so carefully documented by James M. Colby in Orca. Despite opposition, the capture and trade of orcas continues and one harrowing chapter delves into the infamous Russian “whale jail” that was exposed by journalist Mashaz Netrebenko in 2018.

As mentioned earlier, this is not a scholarly book, so orca biology takes a bit of a backseat. Nevertheless, you will learn about, for instance, the different orca populations and their dietary specializations, and how they do not mix genetically, causing a headache for conservation biologists. This behaviour is a prominent example of culture in cetaceans as it is learned and passed on from generation to generation. Strager also discusses the recent spate of attacks by orcas on pleasure craft in the Mediterranean. A marine mammal researcher from Madeira admits that she does not know if this is retaliation or just rambunctious play, but its rapid spread in the region sure points to orcas learning new behaviours from each other. Conservation concerns are the main recurrent biological theme in this book. Reflecting on the situation in the Pacific Northwest and the tremendous efforts expended on returning one orphaned orca, Springer, back to its pod, Strager writes how: “saving one orphan whale is a trivial task compared to changing the conditions that threaten these whales” (p. 214). Overfishing, chemical and noise pollution, shipping, aquaculture, hydroelectric dams—the long list of environmental insults is a poignant reminder that, in the words of Michael J. Moore, we are all whalers, even if only indirectly.

“Given the preponderance of research and books on Pacific Northwest orcas, Strager’s perspective is refreshingly cosmopolitan, taking in the experiences of people in many other parts of the world.”

The other aspect that takes a backseat is Strager’s personal story. This book covers some four decades of her life, from a young student in the 1980s to a seasoned researcher now. And yet, important life events are mentioned rather than elaborated upon. They help provide a sense of place and circumstance, but never play a central or even supporting role in her stories. The fact that she would have a child with the man who helped her onto that first research vessel all those years ago is one of those offhand, blink-and-you-miss-it comments. Nor does she mention that she is now working as a Director of Exhibitions, turning the local Whale Center in Andenes, Norway, where she worked for years into a world-class museum, The Whale, to open in 2025.

The Killer Whale Journals takes in an impressively broad range of people past and present. There are various other fascinating stories I have not even touched upon here. Strager remains mild-mannered and non-judgemental throughout as she carefully charts the nuances, inconsistencies, and complexities of people’s attitudes. If you have any interest in cetaceans or marine biology more generally, this absorbing book comes recommended.

1. ↑ Going on a tangent here: Strager, perhaps surprisingly, prefers the name “killer whale”. Partially this is out of habit, partially because the meaning of the species name Orcinus orca is little better. One loose translation is “demon from the underworld”, with Orcinus meaning “of the kingdom of the dead”. However, orca could also refer to the Latin word for cask or barrel, or to a large whale (Wikipedia and Wiktionary disagree with each other; also see this brief and amusing write-up on Whale Tales). Anyway, it is all a bit tomato tomato: I prefer orca and will stick with that here.

2. ↑ Remarkably, there does not seem to be a textbook dedicated to just orca biology. Erich Hoyt’s Orca serves up some of this but with plenty of historical and narrative asides. Readers could start with the broader Whales: Their Biology and Behavior or, if you are particularly adventurous, the Encyclopedia of Marine Mammals.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

The Killer Whale Journals

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

Ecologist Carl Safina needs little in the way of introduction, having written the lauded Beyond Words and Becoming Wild, and a score of earlier books. For me, he ranks right up there with modern science popularisers such as Ed Yong, Carl Zimmer, and the late Frans de Waal for his thought-provoking and intensely beautiful writing. His latest book sees him captivated by a bird as he nurses back to health an orphaned screech owl. But Alfie & Me is far more than a memoir about one man’s friendship with a wild animal, as it sends him on a personal quest to better understand humanity’s relationship with nature throughout history. Come for the owls, stay for Safina’s philosophical reflections and piercing analysis of how the West came to see the natural world as a commodity to exploit and exhaust.

Alfie & Me: What Owls Know, What Humans Believe, written by Carl Safina, published by W.W. Norton & Company in November 2023 (hardback, 352 pages)

Safina is far from the first person to nurse a wounded owl back to health and write a book about it. Jennifer Ackerman mentioned several wildlife rehabbers in the recently reviewed What an Owl Knows; in 2014, historian Martin Windrow wrote about his 15 years with a tawny owl named Mumble; in 1985, biologist Stacey O’Brien committed to 19 years of caring for a barn owl named Wesley; in 1960, Jonathan Franklin wrote of his time with two tawny owls at Eton. It is a human-bird relationship that might very well stretch back to the dawn of human evolution.

This saga starts in June 2018 when Safina and his wife find a young, orphaned screech owl starving and near death in their yard in Long Island, New York. They nurse her back to health and name her Alfie. What follows are several years of intense caring as some of her feathers initially fail to develop properly. Tamed, Alfie sticks around as Safina dithers between caring for her and releasing her. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting lockdowns offer the opportunity for near-constant monitoring while Alfie flies free, matures, finds a partner, and raises a brood. It is also accompanied by not a small amount of continuously shifting worries about her health, behaviour, and ultimate fate. With hindsight, Safina considers the shelter-at-home orders a blessing in disguise, allowing him to build up a particularly intimate picture with some unique behavioural observations that should appeal to birdwatchers.

“if you think this is a natural history memoir, you might get both more and less than you bargained for, neither of which is a bad thing.”

Advance warning though: if you think this is a natural history memoir, you might get both more and less than you bargained for, neither of which is a bad thing. Alfie’s story is a proverbial MacGuffin that functions as a doorway to two topics. First, Safina wants to understand how people have viewed humanity’s relationship with nature throughout history. Second—closely intertwined with, and flowing from it—it allows him to reflect on his personal philosophy and spirituality. Both are worth further consideration here.

For the longest time, Safina contends, our ancestors thought of the world around them in relational terms and, though he is hesitant to generalize, he thinks that many of today’s Indigenous cultures continue to do so. In other words, many people understood themselves “as living in a network of relationships” (p. 14) which “binds human existence into a moral drama of duty and conduct” (p. 23) and requires us to “move in the world with respect and care” (p. 29). Simply put, despite nature’s diversity, there is a unity; everything is connected. To the modern ecologist in Safina: “the currency of Life is the shuttling of energy […] there are only living nodes in flowing networks” (pp. 15–16). Yet, in Europe we came to believe differently, seeing ourselves apart from nature rather than a part of nature. Thanks to colonialism, that view went global and turned into a world-altering force in the last few centuries. “The great blindness of the West is to grope the world as inventory. The great wisdom of the Indigenous mind is to understand the world as relationships” (p. 30).

“Tracing the history of our collective disenchantment, Safina lands on the Ancient Greeks as the culprits and singles out Plato in particular”

Tracing the history of our collective disenchantment, Safina lands on the Ancient Greeks as the culprits and singles out Plato in particular. There is a fierceness here that brought Eileen Crist’s Abundant Earth to mind as Safina does not mince his words. Plato’s dualist doctrine, his distinction between our world and that of eternal and idealised Forms existing on an abstract plane, “could very well be history’s biggest intellectual mistake” (p. 77). With the three main Abrahamic religions turning dualism into an article of faith, exhorting man’s dominion over nature while denigrating the needs of the flesh, “Plato casts perhaps the longest shadow across our lives—and thus the life of every living thing on Earth” (p. 91). René Descartes completes this short summary by releasing dualism from religion and offering a secularized version around which people of all persuasions could rally. By the time he was done, “the foundation of Western values was hard-set for the coming centuries. Remodeled for oncoming modernity, the physical world was ready for its role as strip mine and drainpipe” (p. 116). Thanks to the modern Western mindset in which “we owe nature nothing; it is to yield us everything” (p. 199, quoting philosopher Crispin Sartwell), we now face climate change, biodiversity loss, environmental destruction, etc. “Throughout it all, Platonist dualism has consistently whispered urgings of encouragement” (p. 213). And yet, Safina concludes, “Plato based his cosmic valuation on figments of his imagination. That’s all they are” (p. 77).

And you thought this was a book about owls.

So, can we pin the blame so squarely on one man and his ideas? Admittedly, Safina recognizes precursors in e.g. the Egyptian ruler Akhenaten as possibly the first to invent monotheism, and Zoroaster as possibly the first to portray a dualistic universe. The forthcoming Subjugate the Earth situates it in Mesopotamia at the dawn of civilisation (I hope to investigate this further in a future review). I admit that my knowledge of the Classics is insufficient to weigh in on this further, but Safina presents a plausible scenario.

“Overt talk of wisdom [and] spirituality […] normally makes me cringe, hard. [but Safina’s] is the kind of writing I stick around for.”

The second topic that is intertwined with this, and informed by it, is Safina’s personal outlook. Like some other biologists (myself included), he is charmed by certain Buddhist ideas. Overt talk of wisdom, spirituality, and anything that smacks of New Age woo-woo normally makes me cringe, hard. That is my personal bias. But when Safina takes the observation that, chemically speaking, we are made of the same matter as everything around us, and marries this to the Buddhist notion that there is no separate self to conclude that “we are selves in a real sense—but not in a closed sense. As a river depends on new water, one’s body is an interchange” (p. 54)… When he adds that “Energy and matter constantly create and then leave us, but we remain recognizable” (p. 167)… When he quotes Carl Woese that “Organisms […] are resilient patterns in a turbulent flow” (p. 167) which so nicely gels with Kevin Mitchell’s observations in Free Agents that “life is not a state, it is a process […] persisting through time” (p. 26 therein)… When he quotes physicist Steven Weinberg that in a meaningless, uncaring universe, we create meaning through our actions by making “a little island of warmth and love and science and art for ourselves” (p. 300)… When he concludes that his goal in life is “to care fiercely without apology” (p. 319) for all life around him… Then, yes, despite my scepticism, I am moved. This is the kind of writing I stick around for.

What helps is the balance and nuance in his outlook, steering clear of simplistic dichotomies. Though he regularly expresses his admiration for Indigenous thinking about the world, he remains beholden to science and logic: “For discerning objective reality […] science has the stronger claim” (p. 36). However, quoting Einstein, he adds that “Science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of its domain value judgments of all kinds remain necessary” (p. 36). Safina criticizes the excesses of reductionism and dualism while recognizing it has made great strides in understanding our world. Where spiritually inclined environmentalists often heap scorn on reductionism, Safina pushes back: “Using a reductionist approach is not what devalues the world. The devaluation comes first” (p. 122). Despite spiritual leanings, he avoids falling for feel-good New Age claptrap. Are birds that show up when people die spirit messengers? “Is [there] more to life and death than you can know? Or simply […] more to bereavement than you can bear” (p. 233). And anyway, “why would birds, who existed for tens of millions of years on a planet without humans […] be “messengers” to us? Isn’t that just another self-aggrandizing delusion of our own importance” (p. 312)? The only aspect that might be problematic is his call to turn to Indigenous knowledge for solutions and alternative worldviews. There is a recent interest in various life science disciplines in Indigenous knowledge. The risk is that this devolves into yet another round of cultural appropriation and seeing what else we can take from others. I must add that I do not feel Safina is doing so here; this is a risk more generally.

“For me, this book contributes to a growing personal awareness that addressing the environmental polycrisis we face boils down to addressing our values.”

For me, this book contributes to a growing personal awareness that addressing the environmental polycrisis we face boils down to addressing our values. No amount of technofixes and scientific advances are going to salvage the situation if “the global Westernized economy [continues to gallop] along behind its three headless horsemen: bigger, faster, more” (p. 235). This is an insight that I find as fascinating as I find it intimidating, as it requires interdisciplinary input from, for instance, ethics, philosophy, sociology, and politics. Science can inform this, yes, but much of it falls outside of its purview. Safina’s quote, here attributed to Freeman Dyson, is particularly apt: “The progress of science is destined to bring enormous confusion and misery to mankind unless it is accompanied by progress in ethics” (p. 271).

This leaves me with one last question: does the combination of these disparate strands work as a book? My short and rather unhelpful answer to this is “Sure, I think so”, so let me clarify. The individual strands are each impressive, insightful, and beautifully written—for the sake of brevity I have left out of this review several other points Safina makes eloquently. However, focusing for a moment on their combination, I was not left gobsmacked. Simultaneously, the book does not come across as a concatenation of ham-fisted non-sequiturs and forced pivots, which it might have become in the hands of a lesser writer. So, come for the owls, stay for the philosophical reflections and piercing history lessons.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

Alfie & Me

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

Advances in medical research mean we have come to grips with numerous diseases and health conditions over the decades. But, like a game of whack-a-mole, you solve one set of problems to only have other, often more complex problems take their place. There is valid criticism to be had of medicine and its reductionist approach and What Is Health? sees neurobiologist Peter Sterling offer a critique grounded in physiology.

What Is Health?: Allostasis and the Evolution of Human Design, written by Peter Sterling, published by MIT Press in December 2019 (paperback, 257 pages)

Much medical thinking and education, writes Sterling, revolves around homeostasis: self-correcting negative feedback loops, comparable to the thermostat in your house. These allow the body to regulate physiological processes, e.g. blood pressure, without involving the brain. However, he found that many endocrine cells, those that release hormones, do have nerve endings terminating on them. Homeostasis is part of the story, but “error-correcting feedback offers no basis for a full model of human design” (p. xxx*). Together with Joseph Eyer, he coined the term allostasis in the 1980s: the brain is involved by predicting the body’s needs and mobilising resources to meet expected demand, temporarily up- or downregulating processes when an organism’s environment changes. In simple terms, homeostasis corrects, allostasis predicts. This also gives us Sterling’s definition of what health is: “the capacity to respond optimally to fluctuations in demand” (p. 154).

This idea has been criticised from various sides as resulting from too narrow a reading of homeostasis, “a travesty that has taken root in textbooks and is widely taught to students as the only kind of control system“, that is not offering anything “that was not already apparent, or at least readily derivable, from an accurate reading of the original concept of homeostasis“. I am receptive to such criticism. Though I was not trained as a physiologist, my layman biologist understanding of it is that e.g. a healthy blood pressure already falls between a range of values and that what is considered optimal depends on whether you are at rest or exercising. Do we really need allostasis as a separate concept? Especially Carpenter is fierce in his criticism: “there is a need to reassert the unitary nature of homeostasis and the variety of forms it can take, so that we are not obliged to reinvent what was common knowledge even 30 years ago, nor to introduce artificial distinctions and boundaries within a field that is in truth perfectly unified.“

“In simple terms, homeostasis corrects, allostasis predicts. But do we really need a separate concept? I am not sure that disagreements over definitions make much difference to Sterling’s point that modern life can break this physiological control system.”

Having read the rest of this book, however, I am not sure that disagreements over definitions make much difference to Sterling’s argument that modern life can break this physiological control system. Before getting to that discussion, though, he spends the first four chapters on a deep evolutionary history tour to trace the origins of the components of allostasis. This tour encompasses the molecular details of the genetic code, protein functionality, and ATP synthesis and hydrolysis to store and release energy at a cellular level. It encompasses the evolution of multicellularity and what we inherited from our worm-like ancestor in the way of cellular clocks, early brains, and feedback regulation between the different parts. (Side note, this is likely where dopamine was introduced as the brain’s reward signal for useful behaviour, enabling learning.) It encompasses the evolution of endothermy and the respiratory and cardiovascular adaptations enabling it. And, finally, it encompasses the evolution of Homo sapiens when it left Africa some 150,000 years ago. Sterling argues that changes to our brain allowed us to oust our Neanderthal cousins. Summarising from his book Principles of Neural Design, he gives a bird’s-eye-view of how the brain is organised for optimal functioning, what we inherited from our primate ancestors, and what we changed.

Overall, these chapters are well written and full of fascinating information, though I am not sure all of it is necessary to understand allostasis. Also, there are a few minor points I take issue with. I understand that phrases such as “a reptile evolved two new features and came out as a mammal” (p. xxv) and “At the pinnacle of life’s energy-driven complexity, perches—precariously—Homo sapiens” (p. 1) are shorthand. However, they could be mistaken for outdated linear thinking about evolution, even if Sterling’s writing in the rest of the book suggests no such thing. We did not evolve from reptiles. We share a common ancestor with them but they have been on an equally long evolutionary journey. Furthermore, Sterling strongly argues that evolution has produced optimal structures or, where tradeoffs make something seem suboptimal, optimal trade-offs. His endnotes explain that e.g. our appendix and the seemingly backwards design of our retina are actually functional, and he concludes that “[…] clear examples of suboptimality are scarce, if they exist at all” (p. 9). I am not sure I agree. The circuitous loop taken by the recurrent laryngeal nerve or the design of our throat that puts us at constant risk of choking are but two of many examples that Nathan Lents discussed in his book Human Errors. We know that evolution cannot simply start from scratch and that it reuses, repurposes, and rejiggles existing structures for new functions. Furthermore, Daniel S. Milo’s Good Enough criticized adaptationist storytelling and made an interesting argument for the persistence of the mediocre. Perhaps these are just issues of semantics and, seeing they do not really bear on his central argument, I will not dwell on them further.

“the simple pleasures of life were sources of regular small pulses of dopamine. These eroded, first gradually with the advent of agriculture, then rapidly with the Industrial Revolution, leading to our modern, dopamine-deprived lifestyle.”

Having taken the deep evolutionary tour, chapters 5 and 6 are where Sterling finally drops the payload and delivers the goods. The mechanism of allostasis breaks down when demand is excessively high for sustained periods. The body responds by shifting its operating range upwards and what used to be exceptional becomes the new normal. In the example of blood pressure you end up with chronic hypertension. Something similar happens with our reward circuits. We evolved as socially living hunter-gatherers that had regular physical exercise, where children of different ages played together unsupervised, where we learned and perfected skills such as hunting over decades, and where the elderly contributed to care of the young. Call them the simple pleasures of life but that is the whole point, they were sources of regular small pulses of dopamine. Sterling argues that instead we now try to get our dopamine hit from alcohol, nicotine, drugs, food, gambling, pornography, or shopping. And many of these activities deliver greater surges, with allostasis adapting us to take such surges as the new normal, fostering addiction. By his reasoning, the Western epidemic of hypertension, obesity, depression, suicide, alcoholism, and addiction to drugs and gambling are all a consequence of our modern, dopamine-deprived lifestyle. He will even throw in climate change, resulting as it does from excessive consumption of goods, meat, and (air) travel.

There is no shortage of recent books arguing that we are the victim of an evolutionary mismatch with instinctive brain circuits that cause us to e.g. overeat; that we have become unfit for purpose and our hunter-gatherer origins mean that we are poorly adapted to modern life. Sterling puts neurological flesh on the bones of that argument. More importantly, he pleads with us not to blame our evolutionary heritage. This reward circuit “inherited from worms […] works exactly as it is supposed to—just not for what it was intended. This has been termed a “mismatch” […] but that euphemism avoids facing squarely that “how we live now” is intolerable to a large fraction of our population” (p. 138). The tragedy is that medical practitioners try to combat this epidemic of apparently intractable chronic illnesses with pharmacotherapy—a pill here, a beta-blocker there—in a vain attempt to correct specific physiological parameters without recognizing that “the underlying biochemical and neural circuits are not actually broken” (p. 165).

“contrasting our hunter-gatherer lifestyle with “how we live now” raises the question: what of the intervening [time]? […] did we suffer the same epidemic of lifestyle diseases that we see now?”

By and large, I am on board with Sterling’s line of reasoning. We did indeed live as hunter-gatherers for the vast majority of our evolutionary history, and the argument of our current dopamine-deprived lifestyle is attractive.

However.

I am always a bit wary of single-cause, killer hypotheses that seek to explain a wide range of topics with one causative agent. Some claims here do seem rather sweeping, and to write, for example, that “it is sobering to notice that the growth of smartphones and Facebook parallels the growth of mass shootings” (p. 132) risks conflating correlation and causation. But more importantly, contrasting our hunter-gatherer lifestyle with “how we live now” raises the question: what of the intervening ten to fifteen thousand years that Sterling skips over? He limits himself to writing that our drip-feed of regular, small dopamine pulses eroded, first gradually with the advent of agriculture, then rapidly with the Industrial Revolution that “accelerated the process and exaggerated it grotesquely” (p. 131). Archaeology and palaeopathology tell us that the shift from foraging to agriculture was a Faustian bargain that initially took a heavy toll on our health. Our stature diminished and especially our teeth recorded the effects of this dietary change. But did we suffer the same epidemic of lifestyle diseases that we see now? Or was it the Industrial Revolution and especially the Great Acceleration that pushed us over the edge? In the latter case, it would seem there are more ways than the hunter-gatherer lifestyle to live a fulfilling life.

Are there solutions? Fortunately, Sterling does not advocate we head back to the caves and draws attention to the, I think, underappreciated argument that history has acted as a ratchet: “higher population densities gradually disallowed any return to the wild” (p. 128). One option is to work with the body’s mechanism of allostasis, not against it, through what he dubs “system therapy”, which is basically what rehab is for drug addicts. It is hard and slow, but the only way to resensitize our body’s reward circuit to more modest dopamine pulses. Preventative strategies would involve changes to modern life to restore physical and mental challenges, lifelong learning, and social relationships between the generations. These suggestions are, to my taste, rather generic and I would have loved for him to develop this part of the book fuller.

Given that neurobiology can be a technical topic, Sterling writes accessibly and makes good use of numerous illustrations to clarify principles further. I found the detour into deep evolutionary history particularly interesting, even if not all of it was relevant to the central argument. Though I am on the fence regarding some of the material here, What Is Health? is overall a cogently argued book that provides both reason for concern and food for thought.

* Have I forgotten to insert a page number here? No, this quote is taken from the first 32 Roman-numeral-numbered pages of prefatory material.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

What Is Health?

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

In the field of palaeoanthropology, one name keeps turning up: the Leakey dynasty. Since Louis Leakey’s first excavations in 1926, three generations of this family have been involved in anthropological research in East Africa. In this captivating memoir, Meave, a second-generation Leakey, reflects on a lifetime of fieldwork and research and provides an inspirational blueprint for what women can achieve in science.

The Sediments of Time: My Lifelong Search for the Past, written by Meave Leakey and Samira Leakey, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in November 2020 (hardback, 396 pages)

With The Sediments of Time, Meave* follows a family tradition. Her husband Richard, and his parents Louis and Mary have all been the subject of (auto)biographies, now many decades old. Science writer Virginia Morell later portrayed the whole family in her 1999 book Ancestral Passions. Much has happened in the meantime, and though this book portrays Meave’s personal life, it heavily leans towards presenting her professional achievements, as well as scientific advances in the discipline at large. Thus, Meave’s childhood and early youth are succinctly described in the first 15-page chapter as she is keen to get to 1965 when a 23-year-old Meave starts working with Louis in Kenya.

Whereas Louis and Mary were famous for their work in Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, Richard and Meave have made their careers around Lake Turkana in northern Kenya. The first two parts of the book take the reader chronologically through the various excavation campaigns. These include the decade-long excavations in and around Koobi Fora, one highlight of which was the find of Nariokotome Boy (also known as Turkana Boy), a largely complete skeleton of a young Homo erectus. The subsequent campaign in Lothagam yielded little hominin material but did reveal a well-documented faunal turnover of herbivore browsers being replaced by grazers with time. Meave has also described several new hominin species. This includes Australopithecus anamensis, which would be ancestral to Australopithecus afarensis (represented by the famous Lucy skeleton), and Kenyanthropus platyops, which would be of the same age as Ardipithecus ramidus. That last name might sound familiar, because…

“Woven into Meave’s narrative of exploration and excavation is an overview of how palaeoanthropology developed as a discipline, and what are some of its big outstanding questions.”

Having just reviewed Fossil Men, which portrayed the notorious palaeoanthropologist Tim White, I was curious to see what Meave had to say about him. In Fossil Men, Kermit Pattison already mentioned that she described White “with a note of sympathy” (p. 5), and she affirms that picture here, writing that he is “a meticulous scientist […] intolerant of bad science […] outspoken and frank […] although he was charming and a gentleman in less formal situations” (p. 136). And though they meet more than once to compare fossils, notes, and ideas, they remain at loggerheads over certain claims.

Woven into Meave’s narrative of exploration and excavation is an overview of how palaeoanthropology developed as a discipline, and what are some of its big outstanding questions. A recurrent theme is the influence of climate on evolution, often by impacting diet and available food sources. There is the difficult question of naming species and how much difference is enough to recognise a separate species, which ties into the whole lumpers vs. splitters debate in taxonomy. The latter readily name new species whereas the former (White being an example) point to sexual dimorphism and morphological variation and recognize only one or very few hominin species. Your stance in that debate affects what you think of Meave’s descriptions of Au. anamensis as being part of a lineage towards Au. afarensis, and whether K. platyops is a species distinct from Ar. ramidus (White obviously thinks not).

This discussion of topics relevant to palaeoanthropology strongly comes to the fore in the book’s third part, by which time Meave is examining the Homo lineage and the question where we appeared from. This sees her tackling topics such as human childbirth and the role of grandmothers, Lieberman’s hypothesis of endurance running as a uniquely human strategy to run prey to exhaustion, palaeoclimatology and the mechanism of the Milankovitch cycles, the spread of Homo erectus around the globe (the Out of Africa I hypothesis), and the use of genetics to trace deep human ancestry. I feel that Meave overstretches herself a little bit in places here. Though her explanations are lucid and include some good illustrations, some relevant recent literature, on e.g. ancient DNA and Neanderthals is not mentioned.

“Meave can draw on a deep pool of remarkable and amusing anecdotes that are put to good use to lighten up the text. And though the focus is on her professional achievements and the science, real life interrupts work on numerous occasions.”

Meave can draw on a deep pool of remarkable and amusing anecdotes that are put to good use to lighten up the text. And though the focus is on her professional achievements and the science, real life interrupts work on numerous occasions. Some of these are joyful, such as the birth of her daughters Louise and Samira. Some are a mixed blessing, such as Richard’s career changes, first when Kenya’s president hand-picks him to lead the Kenya Wildlife Service and combat rampant elephant poaching, then when he switches to attempting political reform. It removes him from palaeoanthropology and their time together in the field. Other occasions are outright harrowing, such as Richard’s faltering kidneys that require transplantations, or the horrific plane crash that sees him ultimately lose both legs despite extended surgery.

Illustrator Patricia Wynne contributes some tasteful drawings to this book, though the figure legends do not always clarify the important details these images try to convey. And I would have loved to see some photos of important specimens, whether during excavation or after preparation, especially given how much Meave focuses on the scientific story in this book. Many specimens are described in great detail but the colour plate section mostly contains photos of the Leakeys and collaborators in the field. Another minor point of criticism is that I was not clear on Samira’s part in writing this book. The dustjacket mentions her as a co-author, but the story is told exclusively through Meave’s eyes, and the acknowledgements do not clarify Samira’s role. I am left to surmise that Meave and Samira together drew on their store of memories for this book.

These minor criticisms notwithstanding, I found The Sediments of Time an inspiring memoir that provided a (for myself long-overdue) introduction to the Leakey dynasty. Meave has led a charmed existence and she is a fantastic role model for women in science.

* I normally refer to authors by their last name but, for obvious reasons and with all due respect, I will be deviating from that habit here and mention the various Leakeys by their first name.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

The Sediments of Time

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

What is the price of humanity’s progress? The cover of this book, featuring a dusty landscape of tree stumps, leaves little to the imagination. In the eyes of French journalist and historian Laurent Testot it has been nothing short of cataclysmic. Originally published in French in 2017, The University of Chicago Press published the English translation at the tail-end of 2020.

Early on, Testot makes clear that environmental history as a discipline can take several forms: studying both the impact of humans on the environment, and of the environment on human affairs, as well as putting nature in a historical context. Testot does all of this in this ambitious book as he charts the exploits of Monkey—his metaphor for humanity—through seven revolutions and three million years.

Cataclysms: An Environmental History of Humanity, written by Laurent Testot, published by The University of Chicago Press in November 2020 (hardback, 452 pages)

To be frank, Testot deals with the first 2,988,000 years in the first two chapters. Understandably, as the pace of progress was initially slow, and comparatively little information is available to us from the palaeontological and archaeological records. Thus, he starts his history proper with the agricultural revolution ~12,000 years ago. Given the synthesizing nature of this book, Cataclysms will be a feast of recognition for readers that are familiar with the literature.

Some examples include the near-simultaneous rise of agriculture in several places, with geography playing an important role in which plants and animals were available to domesticate, or the fall of the Late-Bronze Age civilizations in the 12th century BCE. The myth of virgin rainforests and the long history of agriculture practised in the jungle. The microbiological onslaught that accompanied the Columbian exchange when Christopher Columbus and other explorers brought new epidemics to the Americas, or the scourge of mosquito-borne diseases that later decimated European colonialists overseas. The medieval Little Ice Age and the global crises it precipitated, or the worldwide impact of the Tambora volcanic eruption. The Great Acceleration in the 20th century and the recognition of the Anthropocene. All of these have been chronicled at length in books and other publications.

“Given the synthesizing nature of this book, Cataclysms will be a feast of recognition for readers that are familiar with the literature.”

Testot also mentions episodes that I was barely familiar with; partially, I suspect, because he can draw on the French history literature. For example the eruption of the Samalas volcano that seems to have served as a transition between the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. Or the 15th-century mining for silver in the Andes and the immense pollution that caused. Or the environmental roots of the expression “mad as a hatter” (it involves the 17th-century beaver trade). Cataclysms sometimes seems to forget it is an environmental history book. Thus, the environment takes a backseat when he describes the Axial Age, the period between 800 and 300 BCE that saw the birth of universal religions and philosophies in both Asia and Europe that are still with us today. Similarly, the chapter charting the rise of money, empires, and trade in Europe and Asia before the Common Era only at the very end examines the environmental impact of it all.

The book’s style might divide opinions. Testot throws all his eggs in the proverbial narrative basket. The book is clearly deeply researched, but the notes section at the end encompasses a mere 16 pages. Testot must have decided that supporting every claim and fact with a footnote would have distracted from the story he tells. Although the references contain many interesting books and publications, those wishing to check up on certain claims will have to do their own research. Furthermore, the book is strikingly devoid of photos, maps, graphs, and tables, bar a single chart of the human world population through time in the appendix. As such, I felt Cataclysms did not deliver on the dustjacket’s promise of providing “the full tally” the way e.g. Vaclav Smil did in Harvesting the Biosphere. Those wanting a more data-driven overview will probably want to check out Cataclysms‘s big contender for 2020, Daniel R. Headrick’s Humans versus Nature. I had the chance to rifle through a copy, though not yet read it in full. At 604 pages with a 100-page notes section (and some illustrations), it promises to be a denser read.

“[The book] will undoubtedly charm newcomers to the field with its narrative style and ambitious scope […] but I suspect that seasoned readers will crave something more dense and data-heavy.”

Testot’s outlook for the future is bleak, though his concluding chapter wanders somewhat aimlessly. Rather than offering an overview of which planetary boundaries we have breached and how far in overshoot we are, Testot focuses on what he calls the upcoming Evolutive Revolution before turning to some likely consequences of climate change. This final revolution could either pan out as the pipe-dream of transhumanism where nano-, bio-, and information technologies converge into the singularity that would make humans immortal / obsolete as Artificial Intelligence takes over (something Testot is critical of), or we may end up as mutants in the chemical cesspit that we are making of our planet. Throw in a conclusion and an epilogue to the English edition that both reiterate main points from the book, and it starts to feel a little bit like Tolkien’s struggle to let the reader go in the last book of The Lord of the Rings.

Environmental history has become a rather crowded subject and opinions will probably be divided on whether Cataclysms stands out from the crowd sufficiently. It will undoubtedly charm newcomers to the field with its narrative style and ambitious scope—Testot knows how to spin a fine yarn and provides an entry point to many fascinating chapters in world history that readers will want to explore further. I certainly enjoyed reading it, but I suspect that seasoned readers will crave something more dense and data-heavy.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

Cataclysms

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

The legendary British broadcaster and natural historian Sir David Attenborough needs almost no introduction. Since his first appearance on our television screens in 1954, he has gone on to a long and distinguished career presenting and narrating groundbreaking nature documentaries. And he shows no sign of slowing down. His voice and style have become so iconic that he has been dubbed the voice of nature. Over the years, he has increasingly expressed concern over the state of the natural world, and in A Life on Our Planet Attenborough fully engages with this topic. However, when you turn to the title page you will notice the name of a co-author, Jonnie Hughes, who directed the Netflix documentary tied in with this book. As Attenborough explains in his acknowledgements, Hughes has been particularly instrumental in the writing of the third part of the book, together with substantial assistance from the Science Team at WWF. This is Attenborough’s witness statement, yes, but whose vision of the future is it?

A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future, written by Sir David Attenborough with Jonnie Hughes, published by Witness Books (an imprint of Ebury Press) in October 2020 (hardback, 282 pages)

A Life on Our Planet is divided into three parts, the first of which features highlights from Attenborough’s filmmaking career. Interwoven with vignettes that you might recognize from his autobiography are short episodes in the history of life on our planet and the rise of human civilization—this is Attenborough writing at his finest. Overlaid is his increasing concern for the changes he has witnessed. Each chapter heading ominously lists the human world population, the atmospheric carbon level, and the estimated percentage of wilderness remaining in a certain year.

The brief second part, “What Lies Ahead”, serves as a bridge to the third part and introduces several important concepts. One is the Great Acceleration, the period following the 1950s in which our activity and impact on the environment ramped up tremendously. The other is the Planetary Boundaries model drawn up by Johan Rockström and colleagues, which I brought up in my previous review of Planetary Accounting. This Earth systems science framework demarcates a “safe operating space for humanity” by identifying nine planetary processes and systems with their boundary values, several of which we have exceeded with our actions. In just ten pages, the book then looks ahead to some likely environmental tipping points in our near future, such as forest dieback and permafrost melting. I was expecting a longer section along the lines of Lynas’s Our Final Warning and Wallace-Well’s The Uninhabitable Earth, but clearly, this book has no interest in dwelling on the catastrophes ahead.

“Interwoven with autobiographical vignettes are short episodes in the history of life on our planet and the rise of human civilization—this is Attenborough writing at his finest.”

This brings us to the vision for the future, which is where the question of authorship becomes increasingly blurred. At times I was not sure whether I was reading Attenborough’s voice or a WWF policy brief. The book takes the planetary boundaries model with its ecological ceiling and Kate Raworth’s modification known as the Doughnut model, which adds a social foundation to it, i.e. the minimum requirements for human well-being. It then outlines some of the changes required to significantly reduce our impact on the planet, leaning towards “green” and nature-based solutions aimed primarily at restoring biodiversity. The overall tone here is hopeful and the book hits many relevant points, though I have some criticism.

Let’s start with what I appreciated. First, and this feels like Attenborough speaking, it gets its philosophy right, tackling anthropocentrism: “We moved from being a part of nature to being apart from nature […] we need to reverse that transition” (p. 125). It also acknowledges the shifting baseline syndrome in the context of fisheries and beyond: how each generation takes an increasingly impoverished environment as the new normal. Right out of the gate it tackles the need to move beyond the paradigm of perpetual growth and abandon Gross Domestic Product as our prime measure of welfare. Agriculture will have to rely on far less land through solutions that are high-tech (e.g. hydroponic greenhouses run on renewable energy), or low-tech (e.g. a shift away from monocultures to something more approaching functional ecosystems via regenerative farming and the growing of mixed crops). Most important would be a change from a meat- to a plant-based diet. Attenborough again: “When I was young […] meat was a rare treat” (p. 169). We should want less stuff and require our things to be repairable and recyclable, moving ultimately towards a circular economy. This all ties in nicely, although it is not spelt out here, with an ethos of self-limitation that we need to reclaim.

“This brings us to the vision for the future, which is where the question of authorship becomes increasingly blurred. At times I was not sure whether I was reading Attenborough’s voice or a WWF policy brief.”

Carbon capture will have to be achieved not by high-tech solutions, but by both reforestation on land and the farming of kelp forests in the sea (Ruth Kassinger already made the point in Slime that algae might just save the world). Both these solutions will help the massive rewilding efforts this book envisions: Marine Protected Areas will help fish populations to recover, resulting in sustainable fisheries, while on land more habitat will become available for wild animals. And, finally and importantly, the book tackles human population numbers, aiming for the humane solution of stabilising the world population as quickly as possible at 9–11 billion people by lifting people out of poverty and empowering women.

The holistic package proposed here, underpinned with examples of success stories from around the globe, almost makes it sound like we can have it all. Can we? The authors acknowledge that many of these transitions will not come easily and will require everyone to come together and cooperate (in itself a tall order). Where achievability is concerned, the devil is in the details, and I do feel that these are sometimes glossed over and that taboo subjects are avoided.

Take agriculture—there is no mention of the tremendous potential of genetically modified organisms. Similarly unmentioned regarding renewable energy is the concept of energy density and our reliance on increasingly energy-dense fuels as civilization progressed. There is no consideration of the tremendous amount of resources needed to build and maintain the necessary infrastructure. A combined solution of renewable and nuclear energy (admittedly a non-renewable) is considered a no-no. And though a circular economy is a step up from our linear system of produce-use-discard, you cannot endlessly recycle: a constant influx of virgin material is required. Not all metals can be economically recovered, nor all the compound materials we make unmade. Ever tried unfrying an egg? Entropy does not run that way.

“The holistic package proposed here […] almost makes it sound like we can have it all. Can we? […] these transitions will not come easily and […] the devil is in the details.”

The word “overpopulation” is studiously avoided, which is remarkable as Attenborough has been outspoken on the subject elsewhere (see this short explainer or the 2011 RSA President’s Lecture). The closest he gets to it here is when he writes that “we have overrun the Earth” (p. 100). Later, the possibility of a demographic transition to a declining world population is mentioned, but not the suggestion put forward by some that a lower world population of, say, 2–3 billion might be more sustainable. And though Attenborough points out increased longevity as a contributing factor, there is no examination of our relationship with death. Should we really direct all our efforts to maximising life span? At what cost, both environmental and quality-of-life-wise? And, lastly, the now-dominant narrative of female empowerment is only half the story and puts the onus squarely on their shoulders. Making contraception and abortion available to women is needed, but better still would be to prevent pregnancies by starting with male education. Condom, gentlemen?

Admittedly, I am arguing details here. Though they need serious consideration in my opinion, much of what is proposed here is sensible. A Life on Our Planet is very accessible and admirably concise. Its central message, that things cannot continue as they are, stands. If there is anyone who can communicate this to a wide audience, it is Sir David Attenborough. Some of the writing here will stick with you long after you have closed the book: “We often talk of saving the planet, but the truth is that we must do these things to save ourselves.” (p. 218). Here speaks a wise elder who, even at 94, indefatigably defends our environment.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

A Life on Our Planet

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

Whatever mental image you have of our close evolutionary cousins, the Neanderthals, it is bound to be incomplete. Kindred is an ambitious book that takes in the full sweep of 150 years of scientific discovery and covers virtually every facet of their biology and culture. Archaeologist Rebecca Wragg Sykes has drawn on her extensive experience communicating science outside of the narrow confines of academia to write a book that is as accessible as it is informative, and that stands out for its nuance and progressive outlook. Is this a new popular science benchmark?

Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art, written by Rebecca Wragg Sykes, published by Bloomsbury Sigma in August 2020 (hardback, 408 pages)

Two things immediately struck me when I received this book. First, a personal favourite, illustrated end plates! Since Kindred discusses discoveries made at numerous dig sites, there is a map of Europe and part of Asia with their locations. At the back, there is a family tree showing the complex interrelatedness between early Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, and Denisovans. Second, at just shy of 400 pages with the bibliography online (more on that later) and having a larger trim size than usual for a Bloomsbury Sigma title, this is a chunky book

The reason soon becomes apparent: Sykes covers a lot of ground in this book. The deeper evolutionary history of our family tree, the history of Neanderthal discovery, their skeletal morphology, the traces and injuries that reveal their hardships in life, the climatological fluctuations during the 350,000 years of their existence on this planet, the stone, wood, and bone tools they produced and left behind, their diet, the temporary nature of their home sites as deduced from traces of fireplaces, their migrations and mobility in the landscape, the material traces hinting at a sense of aesthetics, the educated guesses we can make about their social and emotional lives, their funerary practices, the ancient DNA revolution, and, finally, the various explanations given for their disappearance. The scope of Kindred is nothing short of breathtaking. Her acknowledgements mention that the eight years it took to write this book were as daunting and as difficult as she had feared they would be, and the enormity of the task is clear.

“[…] the tools now at the disposal of archaeologists border on science fiction. Most certainly quite beyond the imagination of the pioneers, but even a formidable task for current scientists to keep on top of.”

Part of the reason is that technological advances have led to a veritable explosion in new methods to apply and new kinds of questions to ask. I was familiar with some of these, such as ancient DNA and the microscopic patterns of wear and tear left on teeth, but many were entirely new to me. The use of computers to fit stone flakes and fragments back together to reconstruct how a piece of stone was chipped and shaped into a tool? The use of laser scanners to document dig sites in exquisite three-dimensional detail? The analysis of the microscopic stratigraphy in soot layers, known as fuliginochronology? The use of isotopes to study where individuals were born and then moved to during their lives? As Sykes remarks, the tools now at the disposal of archaeologists border on science fiction. Most certainly quite beyond the imagination of the pioneers, but even a formidable task for current scientists to keep on top of.

This avalanche of information and techno-wizardry could have resulted in an inaccessible monolith of a book. There were a (very) few places where I felt Sykes careened into a dense thicket of details, such as when discussing the different lithic techno-complexes (for us mortals, the different styles of stone tools). And she does not always explain technologies. I assume most people will not know what the deal is with ancient DNA or what mtDNA even stands for. By and large, however, this book stands out for being fascinating, accessible, and terribly exciting. This is a golden age for archaeology! Most chapters are just the right length to avoid information overload, while a handful of drawings illustrate tricky concepts.

The picture that emerges of Neanderthals is that of hominins who are increasingly indistinguishable from early Homo sapiens; inventive, smart, social creatures, likely capable of spoken language, that survived for a very long time while weathering ice ages and warm periods. This picture is delivered in vivid writing that sometimes borders on lyrical—there were passages where I felt Sykes channelled the voice of deep time:

“Amid ancient surfaces densely spangled with myriad artefacts, fireplaces are like archaeological wormholes, bridging the impossible chasms of time separating us from long-vanished dwellers.”

But there is much else in her writing to admire. There are fascinating histories: how some skeletons ended up scattered over different countries, surviving multiple wars before the different body parts were reunited decades later. She reveals how archaeologists used to work and think, and how that has changed. For example, early excavators could not tell the difference between naturally shattered versus intentionally knapped rocks, thus discarding vast bodies of evidence at dig sites without recording them. In some cases, these are now being re-excavated for renewed examination. She repeatedly warns of simplistic interpretations and sexed-up headlines that dominate the news, instead stressing the far more interesting nuances, such as the fantastically complex patterns of population dispersals, influxes, turnovers, and interbreeding revealed by ancient DNA.

One of Sykes’s side projects is co-curating the website TrowelBlazers which celebrates the achievements of women in archaeology, geology, and palaeontology. Thus, I expected a certain progressive outlook. Indeed, why should the evidence for interbreeding always be interpreted as rape? Why is “desire and even emotional attachment […] regarded as more of a fairy tale than other explanations”? But she goes well beyond that, positively surprising me. Such as when parsing the complex and incomplete evidence for cannibalism in Neanderthals. She challenges the reader to consider different ways of interpreting this behaviour. Or by highlighting how Indigenous knowledge from hunter-gatherer communities can offer completely fresh perspectives on the archaeological record. This can illuminate blind spots of Western scientists, whether practical (the identification of tracks in the physical record) or more fundamental (challenging our ingrained tendency to see everything through a lens of dominance, exploitation, and conflict).

“[…] this book stands out for being fascinating, accessible, and terribly exciting. This is a golden age for archaeology!”

Finally, one decision that might divide opinions. Sykes opens the book explaining why, after careful thought, she did not include citations for claims and statements, focusing instead on the narrative. She has provided a 122-page bibliography online, but unfortunately, there is no link between references and what part of the text they are relevant to. Although I understand her reasoning, I have always found the use of superscripted numbers leading to individual notes and references to be a minimally intrusive middle road.

Though Kindred is not the first book to point towards a certain Neanderthal renaissance, its scope and authoritativeness eclipse what has come before. Whether you wonder what book to start with when new to the topic, or which book to pick if you only have time for one, Kindred is without a doubt the go-to book for a nuanced and current picture of Neanderthals.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

Kindred

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

Some encounters change the course of your life. For young American Peace Corps volunteer Jonathan C. Slaght, it was a chance sighting of a rare owl in the Russian Far East that turned him onto the path of wildlife conservation. Hidden behind the conservation plans and the data there are amazing personal stories that are not often told. Owls of the Eastern Ice is a spellbinding memoir of determination and obsession with safeguarding the future of this bird of prey that firmly hooked its talons in me and did not let go.

Owls of the Eastern Ice: The Quest to Find and Save the World’s Largest Owl, written by Jonathan C. Slaght, published in Europe by Allen Lane in August 2020 (hardback, 348 pages)

Primorye, or Primorsky Krai*, is a remote spit of land in the Russian Far East, wedged between China and the Sea of Japan, that is as bleak and forbidding as the cover of the book suggests**. It is home to bears, tigers, leopards, and the elusive Blakiston’s fish owl that went unnoticed by local ornithologists for a century. But the area is not free of human pressures. The locals have a long tradition of living off the land, hunting and fishing, while commercial industries such as mining and logging are being developed. But not to the point that it has severely degraded this ecosystem. Yet. Successful wildlife conservation here requires cooperation with local interests, which requires knowledge. Owls of the Eastern Ice thus tells the story of Slaght’s PhD project from 2006 to 2010 to collect baseline data on these long-lived owls: where they nest, what landscape features they prefer, or how large their territories are.

Credit: Jonathan Slaght

What sounds like a simple plan on paper—find some owls, fit them with radio transmitters, monitor where they go—hides weeks or months of back-breaking labour on a shoestring budget, endless patience, and sometimes the bitter disappointment of having nothing to show for it. Especially in remote parts of the world, even the most mundane tasks can be challenging beyond the comprehension of most Westerners (I had my brush with this as a student). So, in some ways, Owls of the Eastern Ice is the classical hero’s journey, Slaght starting out as a rookie who is not even quite sure what these birds look or sound like. During the successive three-month field seasons, he goes from fleeting glimpses of fleeing owls to catching, banding, and tagging a handful of adults, to ultimately observing intimate moments in the lives of these birds. For interested readers, endnotes will lead you to the hard biological facts published in papers and books. Here, it is his vivid descriptions that bring this mysterious raptor to live:

“Breathy, low and organic, the fish owls’ call pulsed through the forest, hiding among the creaking trees and bending with the rushing river. It was the sound of something ancient and in its place.”

A lot of what propels this book, however, is the human story. Even though Slaght has visited Primorye for years before starting this project and speaks Russian, his novice mistakes and the steep learning curve of the fieldwork make it clear that he remains an outsider. I might have called this a hero’s journey, but Slaght never pretends to be one: this is a team effort. Next to his mentor Sergey Surmach there is a motley crew of assistants and fixers with their own idiosyncrasies who share cramped sleeping quarters and all-night stakeouts; from a cynical former coal miner to a virtuoso snorer with a urine fetish. The help of locals with their own colourful backstories—hermits, hunters, and loggers—is equally crucial to making this research possible.

Credit: Amur–Ussuri Centre for Avian Biodiversity

Slaght’s observations of the cultural differences and the occasional misunderstandings flowing from them provide plenty of amusing anecdotes: the stubborn, manly-man Russian attitudes that not infrequently get people into trouble, the unusual Eastern European superstitions, and the local customs that often involve long drinking sessions. (Why sell bottles of vodka with a cap? “Either a bottle is full or it is empty, with only a short period between these two states.”) But Slaght never descends into mockery or disrespectful cultural voyeurism, and recognizes how crazy his calling is. The people he meets regularly wonder who in his right mind would spend the winter months in this remote corner of the world chasing after some birds.

“the starring role is reserved for nature itself […] The violence of the spring melt gives rise to phenomena that have no words outside of the Russian language”

In many ways, the starring role is reserved for nature itself: the majestic forest taiga and the cold spine of the Sikhote–Alin mountain chain. No mere backdrop, it rules man and beast alike, readily taking the lives of those unwary, unprepared, or just plain unlucky. Fieldwork here is a constant struggle against the elements, dictated by the changing of the seasons. The violence of the spring melt gives rise to phenomena that have no words outside of the Russian language.

Slaght takes all these elements—the owls like a fever-dream out of a Jim Henson movie, the hardy cast of locals, and nature’s raw power—and weaves them into a memoir so mesmerizing and spellbinding that I was compelled to read this book in a single sitting. I have tried not to reveal too many details in this review so as not to spoil potential readers. I will just say that if you enjoy wilderness travelogues or books such as Schaller’s Tibet Wild or Berger’s recent book Extreme Conservation, then you will devour Owls of the Eastern Ice. The fish owls are blessed to have someone like Slaght fight their cause. And if my review did not convince you, let me leave you with this book trailer.

* A krai is a federal subject, one of the types of administrative divisions of Russia, roughly translating to “region” or “area” in English.

** The UK cover, that is, the US cover is not nearly as impressive.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

Owls of the Eastern Ice

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

__________________________________________________________________

I will come right out and say this: if the subtitle turned you off, give this book a chance. Yes, this is a sceptical take on the subject, but without the typical mockery and ridicule. Natural sees religious scholar Alan Levinovitz critically but thoughtfully examine the appeal to nature fallacy*: the idea that just because something is natural it is good. For a biologist, the “natural goodness” myth is particularly grating as it requires some exceptional cherry-picking to come to this conclusion. As far as logical fallacies go, this is a big personal bug-bear. Why is it so compelling?

Natural: The Seductive Myth of Nature’s Goodness, written by Alan Levinovitz, published in Europe by Profile Books in March 2020 (hardback, 288 pages)

Levinovitz makes the incisive observation that it is a theological argument, which is perhaps unsurprising coming from a religious scholar. “Nature” has become a stand-in for God, and “natural” synonymous with holy. Our technocratic society thus represents our fall from grace, complete with pollution, human-caused extinctions, and the looming spectre of global climate change. If only we had not turned our backs on the divine wisdom of Mother Earth, etc. etc. Of course, the sheer impossibility of trying to talk logic with believers has caused many a sceptic to throw up their hands in despair, but Levinovitz calls the categorical dismissal of appeals to nature its own pernicious faith. You will find zealots in both camps. In reality, he argues, there is no point picking sides, because the whole framing is misguided to begin with.

The remainder of the book shows how natural goodness is one of our oldest and most pervasive myths. In the process, Levinovitz touches on a diverse range of time periods and topics: childbirth, food, our hunter-gatherer past, natural parks and the notion of wildness, healing and medicine, wellness, economics, sex and birth control, and sports. Rather than going into each one of these, let me highlight just some of the many interesting insights that emerged.

“”Nature” has become a stand-in for God, and “natural” synonymous with holy. Our technocratic society thus represents our fall from grace […]”

One is how old this line of thinking is. When it comes to looking at nature for ideas on organising our economic and political systems, Aristotle and Plato already likened society to the human body. Adam Smith made comparisons to our circulatory system. In fact, Levinovitz writes, these explanations often use whatever scientific model is the flavour of the day. For a while it was physics, today it is evolutionary biology. But stare hard at these metaphors and they fall apart, though people rarely do: “the premise that models from nature can be neatly mapped onto economic systems remains largely unquestioned, instead of being revealed for the theological claim it is” (p. 186). Mythologizing life in the past similarly has deep roots, notably the idea of the “noble savage” that can be traced back to the 16th century (though some argue this is a myth in itself). Other authors have pointed out our starry-eyed romanticizing of native cultures by thinking of them as peaceful and non-violent, or as the “first environmentalists” living in pristine rainforests that doubled up as mother nature’s pharmacy. Did our ancestors have it better? Some say yes, others say no. Levinovitz thinks the question is impossible to answer one way or another and concludes that mythic binaries are inadequate.

Despite his scepticism, the second interesting observation he makes is that those who appeal to nature, as mistaken as they might be, do raise valid concerns. It is hard to deny that industrial agriculture harms the environment, is far from transparent, and happily deceives consumers with similar appeal-to-nature marketing claims. Is it any wonder that people, in their distrust, are driven into the arms of someone like Vani “Food Babe” Hari who provides “pseudoscientific sermons about the virtues of eating naturally“? The same logic crops up in medicine. In the modern healthcare system, patients frequently feel disempowered and no longer in control, suddenly entering a frightening, sterile, clinical world, where bedside manners are often poor. As Levinovitz rightly points out: “Sick humans are not just broken machines. We have a deep emotional connection to our bodies” (p. 123). It is easy to discount the need for empowerment if you have never been seriously ill. However, as his many interviewees make clear, this is an important reason for seeking out natural therapies. Patients prefer to hear that they can regain control of the situation, rather than cultivating a stoic acceptance of their own mortality, or accepting the honest answer of a medical specialist who also cannot explain why you fell ill.

“[On wellness gurus] Levinovitz makes the bitingly sharp observation that this is “consecrated consumption, in which the ritual of shopping becomes a kind of spiritualized retail therapy dedicated to nature””

Third and final, Levinovitz makes some bitterly ironical observations. Obstetricians point out that only because people have forgotten just how dangerous pregnancy and childbirth used to be they can be tempted by the stories of natural childbirth advocates. And, I would add, the same twisted logic applies to vaccines. Ancient healthcare practitioners, meanwhile, would be mystified by our distinction between natural and unnatural—for them, surgery and drugs were completely natural, for the alternatives were magical rituals such as exorcisms. And then there are the wellness charlata––sorry, “gurus” such as Deepak Chopra and Gwyneth Paltrow who hypocritically equate wellness with wealth by charging fortunes for their products and treatments. Levinovitz makes the bitingly sharp observation that this is “consecrated consumption, in which the ritual of shopping becomes a kind of spiritualized retail therapy dedicated to nature” (p. 135).

Although I appreciated Levinovitz’s even-handed approach, in places he feels rather mild. An apologetic afterword explains how he started researching this book a fanatical sceptic, only to realise that he was confirming his own biases and was possessed by a myopic dogmatism. In the end, the whole exercise left him philosophically confused, although he argues that this is not something to feel guilty about. Such honesty and humility are refreshing. Even so, I felt somewhat disappointed when I finished the book. Why? Having covered such diverse topics, a concluding chapter to tie it all together, reiterating the points he made in his introduction, would have been welcome. To return to the book’s subtitle, why seductive? I think Levinovitz is really onto something when he calls the argument theological. Why myth? Because we are natural-born storytellers that crave narrative. And the notion of “natural goodness” provides an incredibly compelling if overly simplistic hook. Lastly, the blurb teases with a Herzogian-style** resolution that the book never delivers: that nature is neither good nor bad, instead not caring about us in the slightest.

This notwithstanding, Natural is a thought-provoking book that stands out by urging readers to embrace nuance over simplicity, and uncertainty over dogma. Would I recommend it? Yes, naturally.

* Not to be confused with the similar-sounding naturalistic fallacy.

** German director Werner Herzog is known for his borderline nihilistic view of the nature of nature, and Levinovitz quotes from his documentary Grizzly Man.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

Natural

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

The Southern Ocean, that vast body of water that flows unhindered around Antarctica, has to be one of the most forbidding oceans on our planet. Its latitudes are referred to by increasingly unnerving names the gale-force winds that have terrorised mariners since they first set sail here – the roaring forties, the furious fifties, the screaming sixties. Its waters are so cold that they are actually below freezing in places, with only their salinity preventing them from freezing solid (fish here have evolved antifreeze proteins!) As a consequence of these extreme conditions, this region has long remained unexplored. But, as historian Joy McCann shows, explore it we did. Brace yourself for a gripping piece of environmental history, marked by heroism as much as hubris, and curiosity as much as cruelty.

Wild Sea: A History of the Southern Ocean, written by Joy McCann, published in Europe and the USA by the University of Chicago Press in May 2019 (hardback, 274 pages)

Our planet cares little for cartography. From its perspective, there has only ever been one ocean, one all-enveloping fluid lapping its shores. What we now recognize as the Southern Ocean took shape some 40 to 20 million years ago as the forces of plate tectonics ripped up Gondwanaland, pulling apart Australia and Antarctica. Its completion arrived when the Magellan land bridge between South America and Antarctica was breached, opening up the Drake Passage and allowing the ocean to flow unimpededly around Antarctica in a so-called circumpolar current. This, as McCann explains in her introduction, is the geographical setting of the Southern Ocean.

Humans, meanwhile, have long speculated about the existence of a Southern continent, going back as far as the second-century astronomist Ptolemy. Although rumoured sightings of Antarctica by European explorers go back at least as far as 1599, it was not until the mid-1700s that in particular England and France started despatching ships on missions that were equal parts conquest and discovery. These were the times of James Cook commanding HMS Endeavour, Resolution, and Adventure, and later James Clark Ross aboard HMS Erebus and Terror. Particularly influential, and featured here extensively by McCann, was HMS Challenger expedition, which has been hailed as birthing modern oceanography. It also saw merchant’s vessels take crazy risks to try and find shorter routes to India. McCann’s description of sailing boats venturing into the roaring forties and having to turn north at the right moment at a time when they could not even fix their longitude beggars belief.

“The Southern Ocean […] has to be one of the most forbidding oceans on our planet. Its latitudes referred to by increasingly unnerving names – the roaring forties, the furious fifties, the screaming sixties”

McCann has organised each of her chapters around a natural attribute of the Southern Ocean (ocean, wind, coast, ice, deep, current), rather than stick to a strict chronology. This means she sometimes retreads the same historical path but from a slightly different perspective. One such perspective that leaves a bloody trail through the book is that of brutal exploitation. The cold waters of the Southern Ocean feed a huge number of seals, penguins, whales, and fish – and humans have ruthlessly hunted these to near-extinction in roughly that order. Seals were hunted by the millions for fur starting in the 1800s. Penguins fell victim not long after. An estimated two million (!) whales were harpooned, sliced up, and rendered into oil – lubricating and lighting the Industrial Revolution back in Europe. The ecological consequences of this slaughter still reverberate through these ecosystems and fish and whales remain under threat.

McCann pays as much attention to the natural world in this environmental history. Though not intended as a primer on the biology of marine mammals and seabirds, the pages of Wild Sea are nevertheless littered with details on the lives of whales, seals, albatrosses, petrels, and fulmars, though she has left out some delightfully risqué details on penguins. I was very pleased, however, to see her go into the microscopic creatures underlying all this biological richness, such as the diatoms (single-celled algae) and zooplankton, notably the large Antarctic krill.

“An estimated two million (!) whales were harpooned, sliced up, and rendered into oil – lubricating and lighting the Industrial Revolution back in Europe”

The physical environment also features prominently. Much like generations of sailors before her, McCann marvels at ice – the bergs, the floes, the glaciers – and the sometimes otherworldly play of the light here. But I was fascinated by what lies beneath. There is the ocean’s bathymetry (the underwater topography) and the incredible story of the mapping of the ocean floor (see also the biography of Marie Tharp). These efforts revealed the existence of mid-ocean ridges that helped the theory of plate tectonics finally find wide acceptance.

But McCann really enraptured me with the currents. These slowly travelling bodies of water shape our climate on a planetary scale and understanding their three-dimensional nature is an ongoing mission. Invisible to us, this underwater realm features waves, eddies, gyres, and underwater storms of staggering proportions. McCann captures some of this mysterious grandeur in her descriptions: “In the Weddell and Ross seas, which lie on either side of West Antarctica, the water becomes heavy as salt leaches out of the ice shelves, forming waterfalls below the ocean surface that plunge up to 2 kilometres into the abyss.” (p. 144) Her helpful notes link to an amazing animation put together by the Research School of Earth Sciences at the Australian National University.

“Currents form an underwater realm of staggering proportions. McCann captures some of this mysterious grandeur in her descriptions”

Wild Sea is an incredibly diverse book and McCann’s writing is informative and absorbing. In just 200 pages she manages to touch on a plethora of topics including history, oceanography, climatology, ecology, and marine biology. There are other amazing stories in this book I have not mentioned, one inspiring example being footage of a traditional whale-calling ceremony culminating in a meeting of indigenous leaders from around the globe. As an introduction to the many entangled natural and human histories of the Southern Ocean, this one comes highly recommended.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

Wild Sea hardback or ebook

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________